Release Notes vs Changelog: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should be writing release notes or maintaining a changelog, you’re not alone. Many teams use the terms interchangeably, but they actually serve different purposes and audiences.

Understanding the difference helps you communicate product updates more clearly and avoid confusing your users.

Let’s break it down.

What Are Release Notes?

Release notes are user-facing summaries of what’s new, improved, or fixed in a product release.

They focus on:

• What changed
• Why it matters
• How it affects users

Release notes are written for customers, stakeholders, and non-technical audiences. They provide context, highlight value, and help users understand how to take advantage of new features.

Common characteristics of release notes

• Written in plain language
• Curated and selective (not every tiny change)
• Often grouped by feature or category
• Published on a predictable cadence (weekly, biweekly, monthly)

Example release note

New dashboard filters
You can now filter your dashboard by date range and status, making it easier to find the data you need faster.

What Is a Changelog?

A changelog is a chronological, technical record of changes made to a product.

It’s typically used by:

• Developers
• Power users
• Internal teams

Changelogs focus on accuracy and completeness, not storytelling. They document what changed without much explanation of why.

Common characteristics of changelogs

• Highly detailed and exhaustive
• Often technical in tone
• Ordered strictly by version or date
• Includes minor fixes, refactors, and internal changes

Example changelog entry

v1.4.2
- Fixed race condition in auth middleware
- Updated dependency versions
- Improved cache invalidation logic

When Should You Use Release Notes?

Use release notes when you want to:

• Keep customers informed
• Increase feature adoption
• Build trust through transparency
• Reduce “What changed?” support questions

If your product has users, you should be publishing release notes. Even small updates benefit from clear communication.

When Should You Use a Changelog?

Use a changelog when you need to:

• Maintain a technical history of changes
• Support developers or API consumers
• Track internal or low-level updates
• Provide version-level documentation

Many teams keep changelogs private or semi-public, while release notes are fully public.

Do You Need Both?

In most cases, yes.

The best teams use:

• A changelog for internal and technical accuracy
• Release notes for customer communication

The mistake many teams make is publishing raw changelogs and calling them release notes. This overwhelms users and hides the changes that actually matter.

A Better Approach

Instead of choosing one or the other, separate concerns:

• Let engineers maintain detailed changelogs
• Let product or marketing teams publish curated release notes

Tools like Onset make this easier by giving teams a dedicated place to publish clean, user-friendly release notes while still supporting structured change tracking behind the scenes.

Final Thoughts

Release notes and changelogs serve different purposes, audiences, and outcomes.

If you want users to understand and adopt what you ship, focus on release notes.

If you need technical traceability, maintain a changelog.

Knowing the difference and using both correctly leads to better communication, happier users, and fewer support headaches.